


the urgency of now

by wayfarer



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Love Confessions, M/M, Near Death Experiences
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:48:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24401584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wayfarer/pseuds/wayfarer
Summary: Buck is pretty sure the universe is actively trying to murder him at this point. There’s just no other explanation. In the last two years he has been blown up and subsequently crushed by a fire truck, suffered from a pulmonary embolism, nearly drowned in a tsunami and now this. How many times can he almost die before it stops being an accident and starts being some kind of cosmic hit put out on his life?Or, a building collapses on Buck and Eddie. Confessions ensue.***Russian translation by t_vinn availablehere
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV)
Comments: 70
Kudos: 806





	the urgency of now

**Author's Note:**

> hope everyone is staying safe and sane during this scary and uncertain time <3
> 
> apologies for any typos but it's almost 4 am and i cannot look at this document any longer lol
> 
> title from "1979" by the smashing pumpkins

One minute he and Eddie are doing a final sweep of the office building that had partially collapsed during an earthquake and the next the floor is going out beneath them while three stories come crumbling down on top of them. 

Buck is pretty sure the universe is actively trying to murder him at this point. There’s just no other explanation. In the last two years he has been blown up and subsequently crushed by a fire truck, had a pulmonary embolism, nearly drowned in a tsunami and now this. How many times can he almost die before it stops being an accident and starts being some kind of cosmic hit put out on his life?

He tells Eddie as much but judging by the pinched look Eddie gives him in return, he doesn’t think it’s quite as funny as Buck does. 

“You aren’t dying,” Eddie grits out, voice rough – partially from the dust they’ve been breathing in and partially from screaming his head off for however many hours they’ve been trapped down here. He’d started as soon as they realized their radios were crushed and pretty much hadn’t stopped since. “And you aren’t funny.”

“I am.”

Buck doesn’t elaborate on which statement he’s referring to and Eddie doesn’t ask because they both already know, even if neither of them have said it out loud yet.

He wishes Eddie would take the bait. He wishes Eddie would tell him to shut up or roll his eyes or glare at him. He wishes Eddie would give him something so he could have some sort of normalcy to cling onto right now. He wishes Eddie would stop pacing the small pocket of space they’ve found themselves in like a caged animal. He wishes Eddie would stop shouting that “ _we’re here, we’re down here_ ” at the top of his lungs because it’s making his head hurt even worse than it already is. He wishes Eddie would come sit beside him and hold his hand. He wishes – a lot of things. 

Because the thing is. The thing is Buck thinks he might really be dying this time. He had never been one of those people who gave much thought to their own mortality, not even when he’d joined the LAFD and started doing things like running into burning buildings and climbing through collapsing skyscrapers. Not until he had a ladder truck crushing his leg and some kid with a bomb strapped to his chest ten feet in front of him. That had been the first time in his life that he had genuinely thought about his own death. The feeling of his crushed bones grinding together, the panicked looks on Bobby and Chim’s faces as they tried and failed to lift the truck off of him – that had felt like dying. Vomiting up blood while struggling to breathe felt like dying. Staring at a wave so big it looked like something out of a movie felt like dying. Each time he’d thought _“fuck, this is really it.”_

Now though, trapped dozens of feet below ground with the remnants of a building on top of him and a jagged piece of rebar protruding through his back and out of his left side, Buck has realized the fundamental difference between those times and this one. The crushed leg and the pulmonary embolism and the tsunami – those only _felt_ like he was going to die. Regardless of the fear and the pain and the horror, each time he’d had a lifeline. With the firetruck and the pulmonary embolism, he’d been surrounded by the people he trusted with every part of his being. With the tsunami, dying wasn't an option because if he died, Christopher would die as well. 

This is something else. This is a slow and steady descent into nothingness, his body growing weaker and his mind growing more sluggish with each passing moment. This is literally feeling the life leave his body as Eddie’s dirty LAFD shirt grows heavier and heavier with his blood. This is dozens upon dozens of feet and three stories of building between him and the people that can save his life. 

This is inevitable. 

It’s a sobering thought. Any traces of amusement he’d felt at the thought of being on some kind of cosmic hit list fades as the reality of the situation fully kicks in. The team knows they’re down here, probably even knows they’re alive with all the shouting Eddie has been doing, but it’s going to take them a while to reach them. For Eddie, that’s fine. He’s got a gash above his eye and a whole lot of tender spots that will turn into some nasty bruises later, but nothing that can’t wait for treatment. Buck’s got a concussion, at least two broken ribs and massive abdominal trauma that’s likely going to cause him to bleed out long before help arrives.

He’s so lost in his own thoughts that he doesn’t realize Eddie has stopped screaming and dropped down on his knees beside him until a blinding pain shoots through his body as hands firmly press against the wound. 

“You need to keep steady pressure on this,” Eddie says, pressing down just a little bit harder to reiterate his point. 

Buck wants to say something scathing in response, but all he can do is suck in breaths that sound more like sobs and writhe and clutch onto Eddie’s wrist so hard he feels the bones grind together even through the sleeve of his protective jacket. Which – serves him right, honestly.

“You’re such a dick,” Buck wheezes out a moment later, after the pain comes back down to an almost tolerable instead of completely unbearable level. 

“Am I? I would apologize except – oh yeah, I’m trying to make sure you don’t bleed out,” Eddie says because he’s a _dick_.

God, Buck really loves him. He’d thought he’d already reached his capacity for how much he could love another person when he was with Abby, but then Eddie came into his life and blew all assumptions out of the water. The love he feels for Eddie – it’s the kind that has him ready and willing to do anything if he thinks it’ll make Eddie laugh. The kind that has him letting Eddie win every single video game they’ve ever played together because he always looks so happy when Chris cheers for him. The kind that has him spending more than one night thinking about what their kids would be like. Buck just completely, utterly, ridiculously loves him and he really, really doesn’t want to make Eddie watch him die but he’s pretty sure he doesn’t have a choice here. 

“Eddie,” Buck says, squeezing the wrist he still has clutched in his hand.

Eddie doesn’t look up, just readjusts the crumpled shirt around the rebar. The metal itself is preventing a major hemorrhage, but it’s the internal damage Buck can feel but can’t see that’s going to do him in. His left side is already a mess of pain from the broken ribs and the impalement, but there’s also a searing pain higher up that makes him worried his spleen is ruptured. There’s no telling what else is damaged.

“Eddie,” he repeats, softer this time.

Eddie looks up at him for just a brief second, just long enough for Buck to see the devastation, the _realization_ on his face before he’s pushing himself off the ground. Buck tries to hold onto him, but Eddie’s wrist slips free easily. 

His own hands drop down automatically to reapply pressure to the wound. His pained noise is drowned out by Eddie starting to shout again, face turned upward, like if he could just be loud enough then maybe this won’t turn out the way they both know it’s going to. 

Buck closes his eyes against the throbbing in his temples, but within seconds rough hands grab him by the shoulders and start shaking. His eyes fly open as the movement sends a fresh wave of agony throughout his body. “Jesus, Eddie, stop! That hurts.”

“Don’t close your eyes,” Eddie says, tightening his grip as Buck tries to squirm away. He looks angry – the kind of all-encompassing, caustic anger that had him punching some asshole in a parking lot and yelling at Buck in a grocery store and street fighting at night. It’s his modus operandi – cling onto the anger so you don’t have to feel the pain.

Buck wants to say something, anything to make him feel better, but he just sags against the chunk of concrete he’s propped up against. What could he possibly say? Sorry you’re going to have to watch me die and there’s nothing either of us can do about it? If the roles were reversed, he knows there’s nothing Eddie could say that would make it hurt less. Trite platitudes are just going to make Eddie angrier. “Then stop screaming,” Buck says instead. “You’re making my head hurt.”

“I am trying to make sure they know we’re alive down here!” 

“It’s going to be okay.” He pats Eddie’s arm, the movement clumsy. His wrists feel like they have weights attached to them. “They’ll find us. You know that.”

“Not before–” Eddie cuts off, surging up from his crouched position once again and taking a few unsteady steps back, turning to face the opposite direction so Buck can’t see whatever look is on his face right now. It’s a futile move. Buck can tell just by the set of his shoulders and the clenched fist at his sides what he’s thinking. What he’s feeling.

They sit there in uneasy silence for a while, long enough that eventually Buck can no longer stifle the urge to speak. “Don’t let Maddie and Chim name my niece Evan.”

Eddie visibly flinches, but he doesn’t turn around and he doesn’t speak.

Buck continues. “I know Maddie will try and Chimney will let her, but I don’t want that. It’s a family name and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’m not exactly a fan of it.” He’s pretty sure his attempt at levity misses the mark by a couple of miles at least. “I don’t want her saddled with that kind of baggage before she’s even born.”

Eddie remains silent, fists clenched so tightly at his sides his fingers are starting to turn white.

“And definitely don’t let them do something dumb like add an a to the end. The only thing I can think of that’s worse than naming my niece Evan is naming her Evana. That would just be embarrassing for all of us.” 

“Why are you telling me this, Buck?” Eddie asks finally, voice low and rough and _awful_.

“You know why.”

“No, I don’t.”

“Eddie, would you just–” he cuts off, frustrated. Stubborn, he’s always so fucking _stubborn_. Usually Buck finds it charming in the way he finds all of Eddie’s flaws charming instead of really annoying as of late, but now it’s making him want to use the very small amount of strength he has left to pick up a chunk of debris and chuck it at Eddie’s head. “Will you just come over here and sit with me? Please.” _Please don’t make me die by myself._

He’s not sure if it's the way his voice cracks on the last word or if Eddie can hear what he didn’t say, but he relents. He won’t quite look at Buck as he crosses the few feet of space in between them, but he slides down beside him nonetheless, hands automatically reaching to put pressure on the wound so Buck doesn’t have to anymore.

Buck sighs in relief, sagging a little more. “Thank you.”

“Yeah.”

He's tired. He’s so tired and he hurts and it would be so easy to lean his head back and close his eyes, taking comfort in the feeling of Eddie’s warm weight against his shoulder and his steady hands on his aching side until he slips away. But not yet. 

“Don’t let Bobby blame himself, okay?” His voice starts trembling from the pain and exhaustion and grief, but he doesn’t have the energy to care. Not anymore. “He’s going to think it’s his fault because he sent us in here, but this isn’t on him. Don’t let him think it is. We knew the risk. We’ve always known the risk.”

Buck can’t make out his face from this angle, Eddie’s head tilted downward and gaze locked firmly on his own hands where they’re pressed against Buck’s side, but he can see the way Eddie’s jaw clenches. How he works it a few times before finally managing to get words out. “Tell him yourself.”

_Stubborn._ Buck ignores him. 

“Tell Maddie that – that I love her and she’s going to be an amazing mom because she already was one to me.” The pressure builds and builds behind his eyes with each word until he can’t fight it off any longer and the next time he blinks, tears slip down his cheeks. “Tell her that I don’t blame her for leaving or for pulling away or for – for anything, at all, so she better not blame herself. Tell her I want her to lead a really long, really happy life and I’m sorry that I can’t be there to share it with her.”

“Buck, _please_ , stop. I can’t–”

“And I need you to tell everyone how much I love them, okay?” he interrupts, raising his voice to be heard over Eddie’s protests. “You guys are my family, the one I chose and the one that chose me back. I love all of you so much and I feel really lucky to have found all of this. To have found you.”

He sucks in a breath as that last part slips out, even if it isn’t particularly damning. He could have meant “you” as in the entire team. He hadn’t, but he could have. He could leave it at that. He _should_ leave it at that. It’s not fair to drop this on Eddie when he won’t be around to deal with the fallout, but–

It is literally now or never and Buck might be a lot of things, but he isn’t a coward.

He nudges Eddie’s shoulder with his own, says, “Hey, look at me.”

It takes Eddie a second, but he does, and Buck is instantly transported back to those awful handful of seconds after he told him he’d lost Christopher. That look of devastation is permanently imprinted on his brain, so it’s easy enough to recognize it now. Buck _hates_ that he’s the one who put that look on Eddie’s face, but he has to do this. 

“I’m in love with you,” he blurts out before he can lose his nerve. Eddie sucks in a breath, opens his mouth like he’s going to speak, so Buck hurriedly continues. “You don’t have to say anything. I just – I have been for a long time and I cannot fucking leave this earth without telling you at least once. So. I love you. And I love Chris too. You guys are just – everything to me. These last few years have been the happiest of my life because of you two. So – thank you. Thank you for letting me be part of you and your son’s life. I could live to be a hundred and I still wouldn’t be able to pay you back for that.” 

“Christ, Buck,” Eddie chokes out, eyes growing shiny with tears.

Buck slams his own shut, unable to look at the array of emotions playing out on Eddie’s face any longer. “Just – just don’t say anything, okay?” He’s too tired and in too much pain to care that he’s practically begging. The last thing he wants to hear is Eddie trying to gently let down a dying man, or god forbid _not_ let him down _because_ he’s dying. “I didn’t tell you because I needed you to – to whatever. I just needed to say it.”

There’s a moment of awful, heavy silence before he hears Eddie let out a shaky breath. “Okay. I won’t say anything as long as you open your eyes and keep them open.”

“Right. I can do that.” Buck opens his eyes, shoots Eddie a weak grin. “You’ve got a deal.”

There’s still a maelstrom of grief and shock and devastation playing out on Eddie’s face, but he smiles back. It looks more like a grimace, but Buck appreciates the attempt nonetheless. “Tell me something,” Buck says before the moment can become even more weighed down with his confession. 

“Like what?”

“Anything. Something good. A story about Christopher.”

Eddie nods, says, “Okay” but then he stops, turns his head away from Buck and reaches his own hand up to cover his face. From the way they’re pressed together from shoulder to hip to ankle, he can feel the shudders that make their way through Eddie’s body. The sound of Eddie’s labored breathing as he tries to get himself to stop crying threatens Buck’s own tenuous control over his emotions and before he can think better of it, he wraps his hand around the one Eddie still has pressed against his side and squeezes. 

It takes a while, but finally Eddie pulls himself together. He takes a few deep breaths and wipes at his face with the dirty sleeve of his jacket before he turns back to face Buck, giving him a wobbly smile. He looks a little bit like an extra in a horror movie with the dirt and grime and blood – both Buck’s and his own – smeared all over his face, but he’s pretty much the best thing Buck has ever seen.

“Okay,” Eddie repeats, clearing his throat. “I’ll tell you a story about Christopher.”

And he does. When he finishes with that one, he tells another. And another and another. Then he tells Buck stories about stuff he got up to as a kid himself and then as a teenager. Stuff that has Buck huffing out laughter even if it hurts and desperately wishing he’d had abuela show him pictures of Eddie as a kid. 

The longer Eddie talks, the more Buck begins to sag. Eventually, Eddie gently wraps an arm around his shoulder, shifts them a little so Buck can lean his head against his chest. He focuses on that – the warmth of Eddie’s body, the steady sound of his heartbeat, the murmur of his voice – so he doesn’t have to focus on anything else. If he stops focusing on Eddie, he’s going to have to think about how fucking unfair it is that he’s about to die at twenty-nine in his best friend’s arms dozens of feet below ground and he just – he can’t. If he thinks about that, he’s going to be the one to start screaming this time.

Eventually, Eddie’s stories move away from teenage antics and turn serious. He talks more about how his marriage with Shannon fell apart, about some of what he saw in Afghanistan, about how he’s terrified he won’t be able to give Chris everything he deserves no matter how hard he tries. He tells Buck that he’s worried when Chris is older he’s going to blame him for Shannon leaving, for her dying. It feels like he’s confessing all his sins to Buck and Buck just listens, squeezing Eddie’s hand and murmuring reassurances that he’s a great father, that Chris loves him and that everything is going to be okay.

He fights it off as long as he can, but he feels himself beginning to fade. Every time he starts to fall asleep, Eddie shakes him or pinches his arm or shouts at him, but it gets harder and harder to cling onto consciousness. After a while the exhaustion is too great and not even Eddie’s hands or voice or his own desire to live is enough to fight it off.

He falls asleep. 

Eddie is sick of hospitals. 

He’s sick of the fluorescent lighting and the bad coffee and the smell of disinfectant. He’s sick of the constant sound of machines and crying and talking no matter what time it is. He’s sick of thinking about all the things he should have said to Shannon before she died. He’s sick of seeing people he loves fighting for their lives in hospital beds.

He’s just – so tired.

As if reading his mind, Bobby says, “You should go home and get some sleep.” He’s sitting in a chair identical to Eddie’s on the other side of Buck’s hospital bed, looking every bit as tired and drained and sick as Eddie feels. There’s a small cut on his cheek, but other than that he’s fine and so is everyone else. He and Buck were the only ones left when the aftershock hit and the building fully collapsed. It shouldn’t have collapsed at all, not because of the earthquake itself and certainly not because of the aftershock, but it’s a story they’ve heard dozens of times before – a greedy landlord, improper building materials, code violations on top of more code violations. A house of cards built on a literal fucking fault line.

Eddie kind of wants to find the owner and wring their neck, but that would mean leaving Buck’s side and that isn’t happening. It’s sometime after midnight and everyone else has gone home by now. Chimney and Maddie had only left about an hour ago and only because Eddie and Bobby had finally convinced her they would call if anything changed. 

“I’m not going anywhere,” Eddie says firmly. He’d talked to Chris earlier on the phone to make sure he was okay and reassure him that while he and Buck had gotten hurt, they’d both be okay too. Buck had been on the tail end of his surgery and the intern who’d updated them last had looked optimistic about his chances, so it had felt like the truth. Carla had agreed to stay the night with Chris and make sure he got to school in the morning, so Eddie has no intention of leaving this room until Buck is awake. 

Bobby gives him a pointed look. “And neither is he. You heard the doctor. He’s going to wake up, but it might be a while.”

And god, Eddie still can’t believe that. He’s been a medic long enough to know when someone’s dying and no matter how much he fought it, no matter how hard he’d tried to deny it, he knew Buck was dying. There was too much damage, too much blood on the broken chunks of concrete and not enough in his body. He was going to die in that godforsaken hole in the ground in Eddie’s arms and there was absolutely nothing Eddie could do about it. He was going to have to tell Maddie and Bobby and everyone else Buck’s last words for them. He was going to have to tell Christopher that he had lost yet another person. He was going to have to bury Buck just like he’d had to bury Shannon and all the soldiers he’d fought beside and failed to save. He was going to have to live with the fact that –

He shudders, rubbing a hand down his face and wincing when he bumps the bandage on his forehead. He’s got cuts and bruises all over his body from the fall, but the cut on his forehead is the worst of it. The fall nearly killed Buck and Eddie only needed a couple of stitches. How the hell does something like that even happen?

“Eddie. You did good down there.”

Eddie scoffs. “I didn’t do anything.”

“You made sure we knew you two were alive,” Bobby says in that low, measured way that normally soothes Eddie no matter how upset he is. But not right now. Right now he feels like he’s going to vibrate out of his skin. “You did what you could with what you had and you kept him breathing long enough for us to reach you. That’s not insignificant.”

When Eddie first realized Buck had lost consciousness, he thought that was it. He was paralyzed with fear for five, ten, fifteen seconds before he finally forced himself to check for a pulse. He had almost burst into tears when he found one and he _did_ burst into tears less than an hour later when the 118 finally reached them. 

He still can hardly believe Buck’s going to be okay. By some miracle the rebar hadn’t hit anything vital, but he’d still sustained a concussion, two broken ribs and a ruptured spleen in the fall. Between the initial injuries and the subsequent surgery to remove the rebar and his spleen, he’d lost enough blood to need two transfusions. 

“He–” Eddie starts, but quickly cuts himself off, clenching his teeth so he doesn’t blurt out everything Buck said to him down there. After everything that’s happened since he joined the 118, Bobby has become somewhat of a parental figure for him – even more so than his own parents as of late. He knows without a doubt that Bobby would listen without judgment and he would keep everything Eddie told him to himself. He wants to talk about it so badly, but there’s only one person he actually needs to talk about it with and that person is currently unconscious. “I’m just sick of him almost dying,” Eddie says instead. 

Bobby gives him an assessing look, but all he says is, “Me too.”

The next few hours are mostly spent in silence waiting, occasionally interspersed with quiet comments or ten to fifteen minute naps. Bobby steps out a couple times to speak with a doctor or for coffee or to stretch his legs. Eddie had started feeling all those cuts and bruises hours ago, so he stays slumped in his chair. The only time he steps out is when Christopher calls him from Carla’s phone because he had a nightmare that Buck had died. As much as Eddie had tried to downplay Buck’s injuries, Chris isn’t stupid. He knows that you don’t have surgery for bumps and bruises. Eddie spends almost thirty minutes on the phone calming him down and the only reason he doesn’t go home is because Chris tells him to stay with Buck instead. Eddie has to take a moment to choke back tears at that because fuck, his kid really managed to get all the best parts of him and Shannon and he’ll never understand how they got so lucky. 

Bobby is asleep when he gets off the phone, so he slips back into the room and into his seat as quietly as possible. He wants to take a picture of Buck to send to Chris to reassure him he’s okay, but there are cuts all over Buck’s face and his skin is still sallow from blood loss, so instead he gingerly wraps his hand around Buck’s and takes a picture of that instead. He gets roughly a hundred heart and smiley face emojis in return and he’s honestly not sure if they're from Chris or from Carla. 

The sun is just beginning to rise when Buck finally starts waking up, confused and groggy and disoriented. Eddie and Bobby get to stay in the room just long enough to tell him where he is and what happened and that he’s going to be okay before the doctor is kicking them out so she can examine him. 

It feels like a brief eternity of waiting out in the hallway before she finally opens the door and tells them they can go back inside.

“You should go in first,” Eddie says before Bobby can offer. The doctor hadn’t said they could only go in one at a time, but he wants private time with Buck and he imagines Bobby does too. 

“Are you sure?”

He wants to see Buck, obviously, but he – he just needs a few minutes. He’s been staring at Buck for the better part of the last twelve hours and he still hasn’t managed to work out exactly what he’s going to say. His mind feels simultaneously overrun with thought and completely blank. He needs more time. “I’m sure,” Eddie says. “I’ll be waiting out here.”

He’s exhausted down to the bone both physically and mentally, but he’s got a surge of adrenaline now that Buck is awake. He paces up and down the hallway despite his body’s protests, earning himself more than one wary look from the hospital staff, but they thankfully leave him alone. By the time Bobby slips out of Buck’s room some indeterminable time later, Eddie has worn a metaphorical hole in the floor and is no closer to working out the messy tangle of thoughts in his head than he was before. 

Bobby gives him a look that makes him feel uncomfortably _seen_ , but all he does is squeeze Eddie’s shoulder and say, “I’ll let everyone know he’s awake” as Eddie slips past him and into the room, closing the door behind him.

“You look awful,” Eddie says immediately, which – probably not the best way to start this, but it’s true. He looks more alert than he was when they left the room and he’s propped up with about three pillows behind his back instead of lying down, but he looks like he's one small nudge from falling over. His complexion is just as pale as it was last night, making the circles under his eyes look nearly purple, and the skin of his face and arms are peppered with cuts and scrapes. Eddie can’t see it, but he knows Buck is sporting a whole lot of bruising and bandages under his hospital gown as well.

Buck rolls his eyes. “This is nothing,” he says, gesturing to his body with a wave. He frowns when the move pulls at the IV line in the back of his hand and gingerly sets it back down on the mattress. 

“I wouldn’t call a concussion, two broken ribs, massive blood loss and a ruptured spleen nothing,” Eddie counters, hyper aware of the way Buck’s gaze follows him as he makes his way across the room and takes a seat in the same chair he’s been in all night. “I’m starting to think the universe has it out for you.”

“That’s my joke,” Buck says casually, but he’s watching him with a wariness that Eddie has never been on the receiving end of before. Not from him. "And you didn't seem to appreciate it when I told it."

“Yeah, well,” Eddie says, leaning back heavily in his seat. “You were actively dying at the time. I guess I wasn’t really in a joking mood.”

“Right.”

They fall silent.

Not for the first time, Eddie wishes he was more – something. More charismatic, more open, more brave. More in tune with and analytical of his own emotions. More willing to talk about them instead of just shoving them down further and further until eventually he either explodes or goes numb entirely. More inclined to break the awkward silence instead of getting buried by it. Just more.

“Deathbed confessions don’t count.”

That yanks him from his spiraling thoughts. “I’m – sorry?”

“Deathbed confessions don’t count,” Buck repeats with as much conviction as someone who still _looks_ like they’re on their deathbed can muster. “I was in pain and I was scared and I thought I was going to die, so anything I may or may not have said doesn’t count.”

Eddie quirks an eyebrow up, the motion feeling odd as it pulls at the bandages. “So you do want your niece to be named Evana?”

The joke falls flat. “That’s not funny,” Buck says and there’s an actual hint of animosity in his voice, which – yeah, okay. Eddie deserves that. The poking and prodding and teasing that’s become a staple of their friendship is not going to cut it in this situation. 

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says. “I just don’t know what to say.”

Buck shifts his gaze somewhere to Eddie’s left. “You don’t have to say anything, remember?”

“Buck, you can’t tell me you’re in love with me and not expect me to want to talk about it,” Eddie says, huffing out a disbelieving laugh. It’s not funny, not really, but it’s hard not to ignore the irony of their situation. For once it’s Eddie who wants to talk about feelings and Buck refusing. 

“To be fair,” Buck says with a wince, “I didn’t think I’d be around for this part of the conversation.”

“Did you mean it though?”

Buck tears his eyes away from the wall and meets Eddie’s gaze. It’s a heavy look – one full of determination and defiance, but also a lot of dread. Like he already knows how this is going down but he’s playing his part regardless. “Yes, I meant every word.”

“Okay.” He gets up from his seat and starts pacing the room because there’s no way he’s getting through this if he has to sit still and look Buck in the eye the entire time. “Listen, I’m not good at the – the big emotional speeches or whatever. I’m not good at talking about my feelings. So let me just tell you what I know instead, okay?”

Buck nods, but it looks like he’s bracing himself for an explosion. 

“I know that you’re a really good person who cares about people more than anybody I’ve ever met, even when you barely know them or they don’t deserve it. I know that I can always count on you having my back, on and off the job. I know that I trust you with Christopher’s life. I know that he loves you and he always wants you around. I know that I–” he cuts off, takes a breath. He stops at the foot of Buck’s bed, hands wrapping around the railing to steady himself. Good at talking about feelings or not, he should probably say this next part to Buck’s face instead of the floor. “I know that you’re one of the most important people in my life. I know that I’m happy when you’re around and I hate when you’re not. I know that you fit into my life like you were always meant to be there.”

“So is this like the nicest rejection ever or…” Buck trails off, but he’s beginning to look less wary and more hopeful. Cautiously hopeful, but hopeful nonetheless. 

“It’s not a rejection,” Eddie says. “But Buck, you have to understand – I can’t just dive headfirst into anything. I’m a father and Christopher’s happiness and well being is always going to be my first priority. If he’s not comfortable with me dating someone, then I wouldn't. If for whatever reason I had to move across the country tomorrow for him, I would do it. No questions asked. Every decision I make – I’ll always have to think about how it’ll affect him before anything else. I’ll also always have to think about whether the person I’m with is someone I’m okay with being a parent to my kid.”

From the way Buck’s face suddenly falls, it looks like he thinks he’s already been evaluated and been found wanting, which is – so not right that Eddie finds himself sitting on the edge of Buck’s bed at his side and grabbing for his hand before making the conscious decision to do so. “I’m not saying that I don’t think you would be a good parent,” Eddie clarifies. “It’s the complete opposite, actually. I know how much you love him. The problem is you aren’t some random person that I could date for six months before deciding to introduce into his life. You are already so intertwined in both our lives that if we give this – us – a shot and it doesn’t work out… I can’t do that to him. He’s lost enough.”

“Okay so, just to make sure because I’ve lost a lot of blood today and I’m on a fair amount of pain meds right now – you like me too?”

“Yes, I like you too,” Eddie confirms, even though just saying the words make him feel like they’re thirteen year olds awkwardly confessing their feelings to each other in the cafeteria. “But–”

“No. It’s my turn to tell you what I _know_ ,” Buck says, but he squeezes Eddie’s hand and quirks his lips up to indicate he’s teasing. It makes Eddie’s stomach flip flop uncomfortably. “I know Christopher is your first priority and I respect that. I know that us dating could get messy and complicated, which is why I never would have sprung my feelings on you like that if I hadn’t genuinely thought it was my last chance to."

“That was a real dick move by the way,” Eddie says, but there’s no heat in his voice. He couldn’t muster up the anger even if he wanted to. Not after how close he'd come to actually losing Buck. “Confessing your feelings because you knew you were dying and wouldn’t have to deal with the consequences.”

Buck shrugs, grinning even as the movement makes him wince. “Yeah, it was kind of a dick move,” he agrees, but his expression turns serious. “Look, none of this went down the way I wanted it to. Ideally I would have flirted a little and asked you on a date and then maybe seen you naked somewhere other than the station showers at least once or twice before telling you how ridiculously in love I am, but that’s not what happened. And I think that’s for the best, probably, because it means I can tell you upfront how serious I am about this. I would never risk blowing up both our lives on a whim, Eddie. I’m all in. With you and with Christopher.”

There’s a lot of reasons to say no, Christopher being just one of them. They work together, which is a bad idea even when you’re not in a job that requires you to risk your lives on a daily basis. He’s not sure if they’d even be allowed to continue working together if the higher ups found out. The only thing he can think of that would be worse than getting transferred from the 118 would be Buck getting transferred. They were Buck’s family first, even if they’re Eddie’s now too, and he would be devastated leaving them. It might not even work out and they’d never be able to go back to how it was before. 

There are so, so many reasons to say no. 

“Yeah, okay. I’m in too,” Eddie says instead because fuck it. Buck almost died yesterday and Eddie never would have recovered from missing out on the chance to at least try to be something more than what they are now. It might not work out, but it also might. 

They both break out into huge, ridiculous grins, giddy on each other and the start of something new. 

“So,” Buck says. “You want to go on a date with me?”

**Author's Note:**

> come hang out with me at evanbuckleyed on tumblr!


End file.
